Academic passage 5 — two views on how the moai were moved
One short academic passage, written for this exercise, with eleven questions of the kinds the reading section of the TOEFL iBT® test sets on academic text. The passage is printed in full beside every question, because on the test the text stays on screen while you answer.
The passage is about the great stone statues of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the moai, and the two main explanations of how they were moved from the quarry to the coast: dragged lying down on wooden sledges, or "walked" upright by teams rocking them from side to side with ropes. It reports an experiment with a replica and the evidence of statues left along the ancient roads, and ends by separating what that evidence shows from what it does not prove. No knowledge of archaeology is needed or rewarded; every answer is on the page.
This is the shape of passage where many test takers lose points: two positions, a study, and a careful conclusion. The questions therefore focus on keeping the two hypotheses apart and on reading the limits of a result. The eleven items cover the main purpose, the drawback of the first explanation, how the second one works, what the experiment showed, which features of the road statues are cited, what "It" refers to, two words in context ("pivoting" and "proposes"), why the writer ends as they do, the advantage one hypothesis has over the other, and one question asking which statement the passage does NOT support.
The wrong options are built the way real ones are: evidence for one hypothesis assigned to the other, a result that shows something is possible restated as proof, and details that sound likely but are never given. Each explanation quotes the words that settle the item and says why the other options fail.
At about 200 words, the passage sits at the upper end of the length the current specification gives for reading texts. On the test, a passage like this carries fewer questions than this practice set gives you; the extra items let you practice every question type on one text.
The flashcards collect words and phrases that occur in the passage, such as "quarry," "hypothesis," "replica" and "pivot," each with its meaning in this context.
This passage and these questions are written by Zestly. No official test material is reproduced, and facts about the test format are paraphrased from the published specification rather than copied from it.
TOEFL iBT® is a registered trademark of ETS. This product is not endorsed or approved by ETS.
- Identify the purpose of a passage that compares two explanations and weighs the evidence
- Keep two competing hypotheses apart and attribute each piece of evidence to the right one
- State exactly what an experiment showed, and what it did not show
- Recognize a closing sentence that limits a conclusion rather than choosing a side
- Work out what a pronoun such as "It" refers back to across a sentence boundary
- Infer the meaning of words such as "pivoting" and "proposes" from context
- Infer an advantage of one position from contrasts the passage draws
- Answer a NOT-supported question by confirming the three statements the passage makes
Practice material written by Zestly, based on the ETS description of the Read an Academic Passage task in the TOEFL iBT test specification (2026 update).
Sample question
Passage: "Nearly all of the great stone statues of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), known as moai, were carved from rock at a single quarry and then moved, some of them several miles, to platforms near the coast. How islanders with no large draft animals and no wheels managed this has produced two main explanations. One long-standing explanation holds that the statues were laid on their backs on wooden sledges and dragged, perhaps over rails made of logs. It explains how a heavy object could be moved by pulling, but it requires large amounts of timber and many workers for each statue. The second hypothesis proposes that the moai were moved upright. Teams holding ropes on either side rocked a statue from side to side so that it 'walked' forward, pivoting on the edges of its base. In an experiment, a concrete replica weighing several tons was moved this way by fewer than twenty people. Supporters add that statues abandoned along the ancient roads have wide, D-shaped bases and lean forward, features that would make rocking easier, and that island tradition says the moai walked. Neither the experiment nor the tradition proves how the originals traveled; the experiment shows only that the method was possible." What is the main purpose of this passage?
- To prove that the moai were moved upright by rocking them from side to side.
- To compare two explanations of how the moai were moved, and to weigh the evidence offered for the second.
- To describe how the moai were carved at the quarry.
- To argue that the islanders did not have enough timber to move the statues.
See the answer
To compare two explanations of how the moai were moved, and to weigh the evidence offered for the second.
The passage sets out the sledge explanation and the walking hypothesis, gives the experiment and the road statues as support for the second, and ends by saying this evidence "shows only that the method was possible." Proving the walking method is exactly what the last sentence refuses to claim. Carving is mentioned only in the first sentence. The passage says the sledge method "requires large amounts of timber" but never says the islanders lacked it.